PremjiInvest pours in around Rs. 200 crore in LensKart

After raising Rs. 400 crore in a Series D round couple of months ago, LensKart has now reportedly raised another Rs. 200 crore from PremjiInvest. As per reports, with this round, IDG Ventures is taking partial exit from the company.

PremjiInvest is an investment entity of Azim Premji. The firm, through its entity PI Opportunities Fund-II, has subscribed to fresh shares worth Rs 65 crore in the company at a valuation of Rs 1,800 crore or $270 million. The remaining amount has been used to buy shares from IDG Ventures.

IDG Ventures first invested in the company in 2011, at post-money valuation of $10 million. Ratan Tata has also invested an undisclosed amount in LensKart. For PremjiInvest, this is yet another investment in a matured Indian e-commerce brand. The firm had earlier picked up stake in horizontal marketplace Snapdeal at $1 billion valuation and fashion retailer Myntra.

Commenting about the new investment in the company, Lesnkart founder & CEO Peyush Bansal said:

The amount raised in this round will also give boost to the company’s plan to further augment its lens manufacturing and assembly capabilities, and strengthen its supply chain. It is also planning to penetrate further into India’s tier-3 and tier-4 cities.

The company’s manufacturing, processing, and assembly facility will have features like robotic manufacturing of lenses, cutting and fitting of prescription lenses for eyeglasses with a capacity to process more than 20,000 pairs of eyeglasses daily by the financial year 2021.

Lenskart already has 200 offline stores. It charges a franchisee fee and pays a commission to store owner on each sale. It is now planning to expand to 400 stores by end of year.

Lenskart currently has annual revenue run rate of over Rs 300 crore, and is targeting to reach Rs 2,500 crore in the next four years. It expects offline channels to contribute around 50% of the revenues in the next two years.

It has so far raised about $96 million in various funding rounds. Earlier, it secured Rs. 400 crore in Series D round, led by International Finance Corp, along with TPG Growth, IDG Ventures India and Adveq Management.

In January this year, LensKart raised a funding round that was led by TPG Growth, which valued LensKart at close to $100 million. It raised $22 million in its Series C round of funding. Before that, in February 2013, the company had raised $10 million from Unilazer Ventures and IDG Ventures India. In Series A round, the company secured $4 million from IDG Ventures.